Eugene lube brand Good Clean Love to receive PETA award

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is honoring local entrepreneur Wendy Strgar with a “Compassionate Business” award for her company Good Clean Love, which makes organic personal lubricant and other intimacy products.

But Good Clean Love isn’t your average business in any sense. The Eugene-based business is a certified B-Corp — a for-profit corporation recognized for its positive impacts on society — and works to represent the values local folks hold dear, according to Strgar, the CEO.

Good Clean Love specializes in paraben- and petrochemical-free personal lubricants and products. It approaches sexual health from a scientific standpoint and works to create products that don’t increase the risk of infections like bacterial vaginosis.

Founded in 2003, Good Clean Love was a “PETA company” even before they were FDA-certified, Strgar says. In 2015, when the FDA instated a regulation requiring lube brands to test on animals, Strgar teamed up with Jeffrey Brown, a scientist at PETA, to see how animal tests could be avoided.

“I was able to convince them that the testing that they do doesn’t show any results about toxicity in women,” Strgar says. “We only have to do one of four animal tests in the panel.”

After two years of development and research, Good Clean Love created two safety tests that circumvent animal testing. One test had subjects wear a patch with the product on it for three to four weeks.

Strgar noted that helping animals isn’t the only reason she wanted to avoid animal testing of her products. She told Eugene Weekly about how rabbit vaginas (rabbits and guinea pigs are frequent testing subjects for lubricants) are dissimilar to human vaginas, making the tests unreliable.

The scientific benefit of not testing on animals aligns with Strgar’s idea that Good Clean Love should be creating products that are healthy for human bodies.

PETA came to Eugene on Tuesday, July 25, and presented Strgar with the “Compassionate Business” award in a ceremony with Mayor Lucy Vinis.

“That was always a really big value of ours, just trying to do the right thing,” Strgar says. “Animal testing was never my idea of what I would be doing.”

Good Clean Love products can be found in shops around Lane County from the Kiva to Bi-Mart and Target.